オックスフォード大のフィールズ賞受賞者、AI が数学を支配し始めたことを語る

Robert Hart

is a London-based reporter at *The Verge* covering all things AI and a Senior Tarbell Fellow. Previously, he wrote about health, science and tech for *Forbes*.

Mathematician James Maynard has spent a lot of time this past year “soul searching.” A professor at the University of Oxford and winner of the prestigious Fields Medal, Maynard told *The Verge *he’s been grappling with the future of his field as the traditionally slow-moving discipline hurries to adapt to AI.

Days before we spoke, OpenAI revealed it had produced the solutions to 10 long-standing mathematics problems, some of which had confounded academics for decades. Like generative AI used to produce text and images or propose ideas in science and medicine, the technology learns patterns and connections from the vast amount of material it’s trained on and uses them to create something new. Applied to mathematics, that can mean combining known results, methods, and tools in new ways to attack a problem, sometimes drawing links between disparate fields or resurfacing concepts buried in academic literature.

For Maynard and other mathematicians *The Verge* spoke to, the announcement has added to a complex swirl of emotions about where their field is headed. There is palpable excitement at the prospect of accelerating mathematical discovery — but also apprehension, and in some cases despair, about what this could mean for the people who have dedicated their lives to the pursuit, and for the generations of future mathematicians who will follow them. Few doubt that a profound upheaval is already underway.

Few doubt that a profound upheaval is already underway.

The problems OpenAI solved, using an advanced unreleased model known as Astra, spanned a wide range of mathematical fields, from the highly abstract to questions with practical implications.

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